El Paso girl's dream floats all the way to Florida; watch video

Howard Burnham Elementary School first grader Marcella Ornelas and classmates realeased balloons to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with their own dream attached on January 13th. Her balloon made it to DeBary, Florida over 1,500 miles away.

As part of an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemoration, Howard Burnham Elementary students on El Paso's West Side wrote their dreams on small pieces of paper attached to balloons and released them on Jan. 13.

First-grader Marcella Ornelas' balloon carrying her dream that "people would help each other" was found Sunday by real estate manager Brian Borgiet and his two daughters while they were barbecuing in their backyard in DeBary, Fla., a little more than 1,500 miles from El Paso.

Borgiet found the school's website and emailed Marcella's teacher, Mary Lou Smith, notifying her of his finding.

He said his daughters, ages 6 and 9, are planning to keep Marcella's message, which was attached to a bright blue balloon on a gold ribbon, in their family scrapbook.

"We were shocked to find out it came from El Paso," Borgiet said. "I just thought it was garbage out in the yard. I explained to them that this is kind of neat. My youngest one said, 'Daddy we have to help the girl.' "

Borgiet said he did a similar project in junior high that involved attaching prepaid-postage cards to balloons that asked anyone who found it to drop the card in the mail. His was found two counties away.

Marcella, 6, said she was happy her message was found so far away.

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The girl said she also dreams "that all the people could have money to buy food and stuff like that so they can eat and so they could put clothes on and so they could have a house to live in."

Marcella's balloon is the one that traveled the farthest from the elementary school, Smith said.

Balloons released by Howard Burnham students have been found in New Mexico and Abilene, but Smith said she never expected one would have traveled to the East Coast.

"Maybe this family took the time out to actually pick it up and call us," Smith said. "I'm sure there were probably other dreams out there that did fall and I'm sure were picked up, but there were people that didn't take the time to call. É We wrote him back and I thanked him and I told him just for him to take that time and make that phone call, he made a difference."

She gleefully shared the news with her administrators and iGoogle'd the balloon's final destination on a Smart Board, showing her class the path it might have traveled to reach Florida.

Smith also incorporated the balloon's recovery into her science lesson, focusing on the gasses inside the balloon that made it float and the weather conditions that might have contributed to it traveling to Florida.

The classroom unit taught the students about heroes, which culminated with studying the beliefs and actions of the revered civil-rights activist, Smith said.

From the exercise, the teacher said she hopes her students learn that dreams can go far.

"I tell them nothing's impossible," Smith said. "(King) believed in what he wanted. and he spoke out and he did it in a nonviolent way. We talked about the marches and how if they feel strongly about something, they can actually make a change."

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